Russian light armour faces post-mortem after Ukraine debacle
A heavily modified BTR-82A featuring improvised slat protection and rubber screens. (Photo: Russian MoD)
Russian light armoured vehicles have suffered heavy casualties in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but what are the reasons?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its 36th day on 31 March with no sign of having achieved its strategic objectives.
This is partly due to the poor performance of lightly armoured vehicles operated by the Russian Ground Forces, Rosgvardiya (National Guard) and VDV airborne troops.
Open-source intelligence data from Oryx lists the following visually verified losses of IFVs, AFVs and APCs at the time of publication: 122 MT-LBs in various configurations, 115 BMP-2s, 61 BMD-2s, 56 BTR-82As, 51 Tigr-Ms, 44 BMP-3s, 42 BTR-80s and 32 BTR-Ds — to name but a few types.
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